Feeding your baby before birth:

How much is enough for myself and my baby?
To grow a healthy baby, up to 80,000 extra calories are required. That’s an extra 250 to 300 calories a day during the second and third trimesters.

Simple carbohydrate glucose, derived from plant foods, is the primary metabolic fuel needed for the growing embryo, fetus and newborn immediately after delivery. Pregnant women usually become hungrier, especially during the last two trimester of pregnancy. But that doesn’t need to lead to excessive weight gain. Eating nutrient-dense vegetable foods easily provides the raw materials to grow a healthy baby without adding unwanted pounds for mother.

Do I need more added protein?
Research has shown that adding extra protein to the diet of pregnant women can actually result in underweight infants, an increase in premature deliveries and an increased death rate in newborns. Despite claims that pregnancy-induced hypertension can be prevented with a high-protein diet, there is no evidence that a high-protein diet in itself is beneficial.

The World Health Organization recommends pregnant women get 6% of their calories from protein and 7% for nursing mothers. This amount is easily supplied from plant foods.

Is calcium deficiency a threat to my baby?
The pregnant woman provides about 30 grams or 2.5% of her body’s calcium to her developing baby. The fear of calcium deficiency from not drinking enough milk has caused concern among pregnant women. Yet the fact is, dairy products are unnecessary for good health. This is proven by the fact that billions of women worldwide do not consume milk – yet calcium deficiency of dietary origin is unknown in humans.

Are iron supplements necessary for a healthy baby?
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, iron supplements taken during normal pregnancy have not been shown to offer any clinical benefit. Actually, they may even prove harmful to some women. However, if iron deficiency anemia is a problem, iron supplements may be necessary.

What special vitamin requirements do pregnant women have?
Almost all vitamin supplements are unnecessary during pregnancy since 11 of the 13 recognized vitamins are synthesized by plants and available in a starch-based diet. The 12th, vitamin D, is actually a hormone produced by the action of sunlight on plant sterols found in the skin.

The 13th vitamin, B-12, needs to be supplemented in the diet of pregnant and nursing women who follow a starch-based diet (devoid of all animal products). While the risk to your baby is extremely small, vegetarians should add a non-animal source of B-12, such as a vitamin supplement, to their daily diet (approximately 5 micrograms per day).

How do I protect my baby from dangerous chemicals?
Chemicals are known to damage the genetic DNA of the unborn child. Although there are several ways these chemicals can enter the mother’s body, the foods we eat provide by far the greatest chemical assault on the fetus. Since these chemicals are attracted to and concentrated in body fat, the greatest concentrations of chemical contamination are found at the highest levels of the food chain (meat and dairy products). Those are the foods pregnant women should avoid.

What exactly should I eat?
Healthy babies have been born throughout history and even today to mothers who eat starchy vegetables with no dairy proucts and very little meat. Immigrants from Mexico, who consume a diet high in beans and rice, and low in meat and dairy products, with more vitamins A and C, folate, iron and vegetable protein, have fewer low birth weight infants, infants who grow too slowly in the uterus, and infant deaths than white Americans.

By eating a starch-based diet, your system is in balance. Your hunger drive will match the proper quantities of vegetable foods, so you remain trim and healthy during pregnancy.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you.
Jeremiah 1:5, NKJV